Romney expresses desire to cut education, housing departments

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney promised during a private fundraiser in Florida on Sunday to try to do away with or consolidate several federal cabinet agencies, including the education and housing departments.

“I’m going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them,” Romney said, according to NBC News. “Some eliminate, but I’m probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go.”

The former Massachusetts governor specifically said the Department of Housing and Urban Development “might not be around later.”

As for the Department of Education, Romney promised to “either consolidate with another agency, or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller.

“So will there be some that get eliminated or combined? The answer is yes, but I’m not going to give you a list right now,” he said.

Romney explained in that interview that getting specific about cutting agencies in past campaigns hurt him.

“One of the things I found in a short campaign against Ted Kennedy was that when I said, for instance, that I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, that was used to suggest I don’t care about education,” Romney said.